Your Lib Dem team for Cheadle & Gatley

Over the last 18 months or so we’ve worked with the Heald Green councillors to look at the issue of parking on St Ann’s Road North. It seems that a number of people who work at Cheadle Royal choose to park along the road rather than on the business park, as it makes it quicker for them to get home.

There are a few issues with stopping it. Cars are in the most park parked legally, and there’s no legal way to distinguish between someone who works at Cheadle Royal and anyone else who might be visiting the road.

Just putting down yellow lines or residents parking simply moves the problem: residents don’t want all the cars moving across to the side of the road with houses, or blocking all the side roads.

We’re looking at how we can improve the Cheadle Royal roundabout and Gatley lights to make it quicker for people to leave, but that’s not easy – the sheer volume of traffic is the main problem.

Our colleagues in Heald Green are proposing some limited changes to improve safety. Yellow lines will be painted for a few meters each side of the chicanes to stop people parking up to them, with bollards put on the pavements to stop people going the wrong way around the chicane. Yellow lines will also be put across the entrances to Cheadle Royal (the emergency vehicle entrance and the pedestrian entrance) for safety.

We’re speaking to Muse who own the site, but currently have no way to prevent people parking along the road.

I regularly use this road since it is easier to go South from my home in Lawson Avenue than the A34 or Styal Road. A few days ago a car was parked legally on the houses side (perhaps a visitor to a house) leaving a tight squeeze for normal vehicles – I doubt that a lorry could have passed without causing damage! The road was originally designed as just a road – not a car park. Isn’t it up to the parkers hosts Muse to make adequate provision and the workers bosses to discipline their employees and the Council to control the general environment?
Denser population will increase congestion and need increasingly tighter control of behaviour or implosion will result!

these chicanes are more of a hazard than a safety device , drivers race upto them to get there first – speed issue , some i’ve seen cut on the inside and mount the pavement – illegal and dangerous , when we do stop at the chicanes to let others pass a queue builds up behind – congestion issue , back to the current problem the people that park there are the workers from Cheadle Royal arriving in the morning so if time restricted signs are displayed on both sides of the road for about 300 yards from the entrance to the business park ( this should be enough looks like they are too lazy to walk any further than this )it is especially dangerous at “home time” for the school , this is a accident waiting to happen , unfortunately

Ian, This is just what was predicted before building the A34 by-pass, traffic would be impossible, then Cheadle Royal but again assurances traffic would not be an issue. This road is now a disgrace at school time, parking etc. Just watch this road when parking is on both sides to see commercial vehicles try to get through. The chicanes are are joke, as people try to beat anybody coming the other way.
Why not ask the residents in future for ideas, not council workers.

A point I forgot before, why can’t there be an exit from the science park onto St Ann’s Road North, so that people could leave the site from there and also it would remove some of the cars off the road?

Jennifer, as a resident I do not want an exit onto st Anne’s rd north, there is enough traffic as it is with all the cars that use it instead of the a34. When I moved to silverdale rd in 1998 there was very little traffic . Now I can sit on my drive for 4 mins waiting to get out because of the stream of traffic. The amount of cars parking on st Anne’s is getting a joke I counted 43 the other day, we need a big lorry to come down and take all their wing mirrors off !

I can’t speak about decisions taken decades ago – we can look at the situation now.

– I know people have different views on the chicanes. They slow down traffic and provide a disincentive to use St Ann’s Road North as a cut-through (it has a fair amount of traffic, but still a very tiny proportion compared to Kingsway). There aren’t any plans to remove them that I’m aware of.

– Part of the deal with the Business Park was always that there wouldn’t be a direct entrance from St Ann’s Road North. There’s a road onto the park, but for emergency vehicles only. That’s to stop the traffic all going along the residential roads in Gatley and Heald Green. It’s true we do get up to 40 cars parking along St Ann’s Road North at the moment, but there are hundreds more parking on the business park itself and having that extra traffic through residential roads in the villages probably wouldn’t be great.

We also know that – longer term – there are issues on Kingsway that need to be tackled, but I do say longer term as it seems clear any solution would cost millions of pounds, if not tens of millions, and that doesn’t happen overnight.

People will always look for the most convenient/optimum place to park so if they are parking leagally there is not a lot that can be done. I walk up Kingsway towards Didsbury sometimes in the mornings and I see quite a few vehicles using the underpass at South Park to get onto the westbound M60. In essence it could be classed as a rat run but there is nothing illegal about it. In fact I would imagine that most cars that use this underpass to South Park are M60 bound.

I have my own ‘rat run’ that I use – but I am not telling anyone what it is (others use it too).

I am not keen on the chicanes but they do slow the traffic down, which is a good thing. The cars used to speed up and down and we had a car overturned in our front garden on silverdale rd. As for the parking on St Anne’s I work on schools hill , whilst we were having building work done some of the car parking couldn’t be used so, some colleagues were parking on daylesford. The residents complained and we were told not to park there as it was upsetting the residents, surely they can make more parking on the business park.

Heather,
I live on Schools Hill, so I know exactly what you mean. However, I beleive that it has been mooted that speed humps should be put down to slow the traffic here! I don’t think it would work and would probably cause more accidents. Most drivers, me included, just want to get to their destinations as quickly and safely as possible without damaging their cars, which is what speed humps do.
Parking everywhere is a big problem,but the chicanes on St Ann’s Road are unecessarily large and too far away from the pavement which exacerbates the frustration of the drivers.

It annoys me that the residents of St Ann’s road are far more concerned with controlling who parks outside their house rather than any wider safety issues. This then blurs the real issues (i.e why people are parking here).

The 2 main causes appear to be the fact that the business park has gotten too greedy and created huge office spaces with insufficient parking or public transport facilities AND/OR the infrastructure around the business park cannot cope with the level of traffic that is generated. This has led to people looking for alternatives.

Putting double yellow lines will achieve nothing other than satisfy the busy bodies who obsess at who is parking outside their houses. The business park users (and school traffic) will cannot just go away – they will park further onto the estate and cause far more problems attempting to circumvent the restrictions.

We are not busybodies! And I’m sure if you wouldn’t be happy if visitors couldn’t park outside your house because there was line of 50 cars parked there everyday btwn 7:30 and 5:30. There is not enough room to double park with the chicanes and large vehicles can’t get through WHICH IS A SAFETY ISSUE , I suggest you go and have look before you call the residents busy bodies ‘Smytho’

So it’s only a safety issue when it’s not visitors to your property that are parking there is it?

I’m not disputing the fact that there is a safety issue here, but let’s face it – the residents here are all hot and bothered because they cannot control who parks directly outside their house. That is why you want double yellow lines down *one* side of the road, and not both sides (which would make far more sense for ‘safety’ don’t you think)?

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